Monthly Archives: June 2016

The 2016 America the Beautiful Quarters are some of the most beautiful coins that have been released this year, with two more to go. In this post, we are looking at the origin of the term 'America the Beautiful' and what each of these 2016 Quarters represent.

Katherine Lee Bates, an English professor from Wellesley College wrote the poem ‘America the Beautiful’ in 1893. She had been asked to teach a summer school session in Colorado College that year [1] and she travelled nearly 3000 miles by train to reach Colorado. Just imagine how the sights and sounds of a 19th century Nebraska and Colorado would have captured her imagination! The endless plains and grasslands, the untamed land and the beauty of the vast skies compelled her to write what would become one of the most celebrated songs, next only to the Star Spangled banner!

Collecting historic bills and notes is a widespread practice across the United States and other countries. But the question is... Why collect paper? After all it isn't any precious metal that has inherent value! It is just green paper (okay… a special green paper! And yes more colors are coming into picture now…but you get the point!) How does it still manage to wield so much power on us? While it doesn’t have any intrinsic value, a $50 bill when dropped on the sidewalk disappears just as easily as if you dropped a gold coin.

What is this perceived value of a currency note? Is it more than the promise of the signatory in the bill? If you ask any John or James, he may not care who signed his bill but will sure know a counterfeit one from the real one most of the time. How does he do it? From the symbols littered throughout a note, of course!